Tether will bet on AI, says CEO

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino recently shared plans for the company’s future. In an episode of the podcast “The Scoop” with Frank Chaparro, from The Block, Ardoino shared important information about Tether and the flirtation with Artificial Intelligence.

In 2024, Tether celebrates its tenth anniversary, a significant milestone for the company that started with the simple idea of ​​putting a dollar on the blockchain. Since 2014, Tether has grown substantially, especially in recent years thanks to the worldwide adoption of USDT.

Currently, USDT has a market value of approximately $110 billion. This growth reflects USDT’s usefulness beyond cryptocurrency trading, becoming a widely used digital dollar in emerging markets and developing countries.

According to Ardoino, USDT’s success is largely due to its ability to eliminate unnecessary intermediaries. The CEO highlighted the impact of this disintermediation on economies like the Philippines, where remittances represent a significant part of GDP. With USDT, transactions are cheaper, faster and more transparent, offering an efficient alternative to traditional methods that involve high fees charged by remittance companies.

Now, a decade after the project that revolutionized the global remittance market, Tether presents even more ambitious plans.

Expanding horizons: Artificial Intelligence and education

Tether is not content with just revolutionizing the financial sector. Now the company is exploring disintermediation in other areas, including telecommunications, artificial intelligence and education. Additionally, Ardoino explained that Tether developed Whole Punch, a toolkit to disintermediate chats, voice and video calls, and other forms of communication.

In the sphere of artificial intelligence, Ardoino expressed concerns about the dominance of companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon. He highlighted how AI, despite being an emerging technology, is already being used for political and propaganda purposes. For Tether, the solution is to invest in AI models that can run locally, optimized for computers and mobile devices. The idea is to create a decentralized AI, which does not depend on large corporations and which can be controlled by the end user.

Plans for the education sector are also part of the company’s projects. During the interview, Ardoino argues that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fragility of the global education system, especially in Italy, his country of origin.

“During the first year of the pandemic, many students were without adequate access to education due to the lack of communication tools”, highlighted the CEO. “In response, Tether is investing in edutech platforms, which use peer-to-peer technology to connect teachers and students, creating an economy around education. These platforms aim to teach a variety of practical skills, from programming to trades like plumbing and electricity.”

The future of Tether

Ardoino highlighted the need to prepare for an uncertain future. He argued that many companies and systems are designed to function perfectly only in ideal scenarios, without considering natural disasters, pandemics or conflicts. Tether, on the other hand, is building its platforms with resilience in mind, ready to operate in adverse conditions.

According to him, the company divides its initiatives into two main categories: disintermediation and preparation for crisis scenarios. In the first case, Tether is focused on removing unnecessary intermediaries in sectors such as finance and telecommunications. In the second, the company is developing technologies to face possible future crises, whether in the field of education, energy or AI.

Still, even with its diversified ambitions, Tether remains focused on maintaining its leadership in the stablecoin market. Ardoino believes that expanding into new business areas complements and strengthens Tether’s core product. He sees disintermediation and crisis preparedness as a natural extension of the company’s day-to-day work developing USDT.